Rape Culture?

Please disregard the comments following the post--as is so often the case, the discussion there becomes a pissing match, and therefore irrelevant. I just want to know what people think about the initial subject. Does Western culture condone rape, in the mechanism of oblivious chauvinism? If criminal acts happen in a culture, does that define the culture?

Again, I honestly want any responses to be limited to the initial blog post. So tell me what ya think.

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... entire conception of how sexual power and politics work is so completely rooted in rape culture that he can't even see the ocean he's swimming in. Without consent, it's perfectly possible to do as O'Hagan has done, and treat rape and abuse as extreme cases of sex. His notion of sex is hierarchical, something that one person does to another.

I posted this over at ThinkAtheist, and to my genuine surprise, received many sentiments that echoed yours. And they weren't just from men. I say I'm genuinely surprised because I fully expected a site that is comprised mostly of left wing liberal-leaning members to jump on the ultra-feminist bandwagon, but that, thankfully, is not the case. I do not follow the liberal, conservative, or libertarian ideologies. I point this out because it's important to make a distinction: I do espouse aspects of all three of those philosophies. To philosophize is to question everything, even one's own motivations. Ideology, however is the crystallization of philosophy; ideologues don't ask questions, and they don't seek truth, they blindly follow their pundits or cult leaders. And the insidious thing about ideology is that it can be made out of anything, any social movement or concept. This is what happened to such a worthwhile cause as feminism, which was supposed to be about conscientious respect and equal opportunity, but became in the hands of many (though certainly not all) purported feminists.

The sad thing here is that actually wasn't even the focus of my disagreement. The author was indicting the whole culture as condoning and suborning rape. I find that notion offensive. I've been seeing that baseless phrase, "rape culture," being thrown around a lot lately, and I find that people latch onto it with such ease disturbing, if not surprising. It would be easy to blame "the media" for this, but that just detracts from the real problem, which is...us. We who consume the media. People read/watch/hear about three sexual assaults in a week, then that means every person (woman) you know is going to get raped. Media is not an accurate representation of the facts, and was never meant to be. People need to CAREFULLY study the statistical analysis of such phenomena before snapping to such a judgment. Don't get me wrong, no rational person denies women are at risk. But that's an inescapable fact of life, just as it has been since the dawn of our species. As a progressive society, though, we acknowledge that fact and make the necessary adjustments in the best way that we can, and I think the evidence very strongly suggests we've done that. Therefore, I think dubbing us as a "rape culture" is grossly misleading.